HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS — We’ve all known for a while now that the first week of October would serve as a crucial week in these NBA labor talks.

No progress before then and the opening days of this month could be a make-or-break time for both sides, not to mention the millions of us around the world biting our nails hoping that our first love (the NBA) would come back to us … and soon.

It’s hard to categorize the things that have gone on in recent days as true progress. Sure, there have been meetings. Ideas have been exchanged. But no one is talking in a way that suggests that even the loose framework of a deal is under way.

We won’t know exactly what that means until the sides emerge from that meeting room in New York and explain themselves after yet another day of exhausting conversation about how to close the gap between what the owners want and the players are willing to give.

But if the developments of the past 24 hours are any indication, everyone seems to be digging in and the clock continues to tick …

• With the National Basketball Players’ Association having already offered to drop the players’ portion of basketball-related income from 57 percent to 52 percent, the agents implore players to insist on “no further reduction of the BRI received by the players. A source close to the union told SI.com recently that any agreed-upon deal in which the players received 51 percent could possibly be ratified but would likely lead to the ousting of Billy Hunter as the NBPA’s executive director, so this is in line with those parameters.

• A system in which the current structure of the Bird and mid-level exceptions remains the same.

• No reduction in salary from existing levels for maximum contract players.

• No changes in unrestricted free agency and improvements on restricted free agency.

• “Refuse any deal that excludes players from the explosive growth of the NBA.” Owners’ proposals that have started with players receiving 46 percent of the BRI have included drastic declines in their percentage of the pie in the later years of the agreement.

The agents also tell players to make a few demands outside of the proposal as well.

• “Demand that the NBPA submit any proposed agreement to a vote by all NBA players and provide every player with a reasonable amount of time to review and consider the proposed deal.” As reported by ESPN.com, players were given less than a day to vote on the owners’ proposal in 1998 and only 184 of the 400-plus players actually voted.

• “Demand to see the complete financial records of the owners over the past six seasons, including their related entities (such as regional sports networks and arenas).”

The letter is clearly a preemptive strike on the part of the agents, their best attempt at playing a part in the negotiations and the latest sign of their lack of faith in the NBPA. Yet while players certainly look to their agents for information, insight and advice, the reality is that the majority of them will follow their own instincts when the time comes to vote on a deal. And if a there’s one that is less than ideal but lets the season to begin, a fair number of those players will likely be willing to sign off.

Letter Raises Valid Points

Ric Bucher of ESPN The Magazine: It’s common knowledge around the NBA that, as the agents’ letter points out, those financial records don’t account for all sorts of money-making enterprises the owners have and benefit from because they own an NBA franchise. It doesn’t account for owners who bought an arena in conjunction with buying a team, and therefore can reap the profits of staging concerts and conventions and monster-truck rallies. It doesn’t account for the regional TV networks various owners have, where they get to negotiate TV broadcast deals with themselves because televising their teams’ games is the signature content.

Maybe the craziest aspect of buying into the owners’ narrative is that what little we do know about the financial picture for the league’s two most profitable teams — the Lakers and New York Knicks — suggests those two teams could finance a profitable league all by themselves. The Lakers just signed a local cable TV deal that will, by industry estimates, increase their profits from that revenue stream alone from $30 million to $150 million. Annually. For the next 20 years.

And yet the Knicks, according to several league front-office sources, will remain the most profitable team in the league, as they’ve been for the past decade. This, despite the fact that they’ve made the playoffs twice in the past 10 years with a $100 million-plus player payroll that led the league for many of those years.

Are there teams in cities such as New Orleans and Sacramento that are not that flush right now? Absolutely. And yet there are still buyers lining up for a chance to own them. There can be only one of two reasons for that being the case. One, there are a lot of really stupid rich people looking to throw away their money. Two, those teams aren’t, or shouldn’t be, losing money.

When the negotiating committees began exchanging proposals in earnest last week, several league sources assured me it was a matter of when, not if, a deal would be struck. Some even suggested the owners already have much of what they want and are simply looking at how much they can squeeze out of the players at this point.

The one thing that stood out in all those conversations is that no one ever talked about what the owners “need” to make the league viable. They talked only about what they “want.”

That, to me, is the essence of what the agents are saying to their clients: these negotiations aren’t about the league’s future. Only yours.

Fireworks Up Next?

I have thought for some time that calmer heads would prevail, and that the deal that is so obvious for me to see would be agreed to with no financial casualties — with no real games lost. If I can see the deal — a 52-48 split of revenues in favor of the players, modest but meaningful system changes that would rein in out-of-control spending and raises in the future, and massive revenue sharing enhancements to help low-revenue teams compete — then surely David Stern, Adam Silver, Billy Hunter and Fisher can see it.

Ah, but while those will be the people negotiating the deal, they will not be the people approving it or rejecting it. Those would be the owners and the players, who are advised and influenced by their agents. And here is what we know about all of them:

• The players, who will be represented in full force again Tuesday when the two sides meet in Manhattan with an on-time start to the regular season at stake, tend to get emotional when confronted with the fact that people are endeavoring to take large sums of their money.

• The agents mean well, and for the most part are trying to protect their clients. But they nonetheless injected themselves into the process again Monday when it was revealed that seven of the most powerful in their ranks made a direct, written appeal to players that doesn’t exactly work in concert with the union’s current predicament.

• The owners? The very people being counted on to move off their bold bargaining position and secure a fair and reasonable deal with the players? These are the same people who gave Rashard Lewis $118 million and solved that problem by trading him for a washed-up Gilbert Arenas — with a worse, even longer contract. The same people who gave Drew Gooden $32 million and Darko Milicic $20 million. The same people who hired and refused to fire Isiah Thomas, who continue to employ David Kahn, who change general managers like socks in Portland and who fire off rants in comic sans in Cleveland. Not the sharpest implements on the surgical tray, and in any event, not people whose actions can be predicted with any certainty.

“If anybody’s telling you they know how this is going to end,” a respected team executive told me Monday, “they’re lying to your face.”

And so with the players at the bargaining table again Tuesday, with agents threatening decertification, and with it, the assurance of a gaping hole in the season, and with owners enjoying some crudites with their coup d’etat at another swanky Manhattan hotel, we wait for the next shoe to drop. At the risk of putting my foot in my mouth, I am less convinced than ever the shoe will fit — that the fair deal sitting right there on the table will get as much attention as the lunch spread.

Stern In the Middle?

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports: Once again, does Stern want to be the commissioner for everyone on Tuesday, and ultimately spare his sport a bloodbath of courtrooms, lawsuits and maybe a lost 2011-12 season? He needs to gather his owners, propose a deal the players can accept, and understand that this is no time to run up the score on the union. The owners have already won big. Stern’s spent most of his professional life as an unapologetic bully, but this time, enough’s enough.

Stern is chasing his own big salary, his own big bonuses, and he knows there’s a deal the players will take that will give his owners a fair chance for profits and competitive balance. He invited this insurrection out of the agents, and now it’s coming. He needs to end it, and spare the NBA a needless bloodbath.

“We’re not just walking off the cliff with [Hunter],” one prominent agent told Yahoo! Sports on Monday. “We’re ready to take the next step and decertify. We’re not going to let the league set up (Tuesday’s) meeting as a way to trap us into a bad deal.”

Said another powerful agent: “Stern doesn’t want to deal with us; he wants Billy and his lawyers in there. Maybe if Stern’s faced with revealing financial records, legal costs and paying possibly billions in damages, maybe he’ll have more incentive to make a deal than sitting across the room from Hunter, eat turkey sandwiches and taking a percentage point at a time away from the players.”

Stern doesn’t want the nuclear option of decertification, but he’s forced the players to pursue it. This has been a rigged process for years, and most agents regret only that they didn’t oust Hunter on July 1, when the owners locked them out. Back then, Hunter could’ve stayed as the front man in talks the way the NFLPA’s DeMaurice Smith did in the NFL’s decertification, but not now. Hunter’s done, and the agents can’t wait to unload him. For those who say that this isn’t personal, well, they’re kidding themselves.

The fans don’t care about those politics, nor should they. Without the framework of a deal, these next 24 hours could bring an Armageddon that will set back years of NBA momentum. The players have offered givebacks, and Stern and his owners sneered at them. The agents have wanted Stern on a level playing field for years, and they’re determined to sue that smirk off his face. They don’t care about the PR war, they care about winning. Billions of dollars are a stake, and, truth be told, the agents can spare the players the inevitable bad-guy role that the public invariably thrusts upon them in these labor disputes.

Common Sense Will Prevail

He hasn’t budged yet, but his time to give ground has finally arrived.

The key quote from Stern yesterday: “We’re apart on the split,” he said, “but we know that the answer lies between where they were and where we are. And without defining ours, or defining theirs, I think if there’s a will, we’ll be able to deal with both the split and with the system issues.”

And given how yesterday’s letter from seven of the league’s most prominent agents has opened so many eyes to what has been offered so far, it is time for Stern to back off. If he proposes a 52/48 split, it’ll get ratified. If he goes to 51/49, the ratification vote may come down to a hanging chad or two — a risk Stern is probably willing to take. It it’s 50/50 (including a starting number that represents a cut from the $2.17 billion the players earned last year), he is risking his professional legacy on a single, solitary percentage point.

I do not expect the owners to put their best offer forward today when the sides met at a Times Square hotel. Stern doesn’t play that way. His “last and best” offer to save the scheduled Nov. 1 start of the regular season probably comes Wednesday or Thursday. But even he must realize that he has more to lose than to gain by continuing to play this game of his like a lawyer instead of like an athlete.

I have been saying all along that the people doing this deal are reasonable men, and at a certain point reason and common sense must prevail.

I have seen this movie before, so I am not yet ready to go all doomsday as some of my colleagues are.

23 Comments

Football is 5 weeks deep and the MLB playoffs are in full swing. Casual sports fans couldn’t care less about the NBA labor dispute and wouldn’t be reading this blog if it weren’t at the top of Google search results.

y is 50/50 not fair to the players?? Like Derek Fisher said “players are the employees and the owners are the employers” so if thats the case y is 50/50 split not fair to them???? in any company does the employee take 50% of what the company profits??? they are lucky to have 50/50 coz if its up to me it should be 30/70 in favor of the owners. heck the players have the best job in the world! PLAY BASKETBALL! and they have lots of free stuff! food, clothing, hotel accomodation when on the road and they earn lots of money with their endorsement deals. players are at fault in this coz they are dealing in bad faith..

Very, very grim and dark days indeed are ahead for the NBA for many years to come, if the entire season, or even any part of the regular season is lost. I really don’t think the players and owners have any clue as to the magnitude of the negative longterm consequences that will result in terms of lost full and partial season ticket holders, and sponsors. If the season is compromised or lost, I will never again as a season ticket holder, pay another dollar to support an NBA team or attend another NBA game, and I’m quite sure the majority of season ticket holders feel as strongly as I do. This is a different world we live in these days in terms of priorities for most of us, and we can live without the NBA. These players and owners clearly live in a bubble and have no clue as to the real world, but they are fixing to find out real soon!

I wonder if the players are willing to share their endorsement money?
Are players willing to lose money with the owners?
Does Tracy Mcgrady, get to keep all his money?
Follow Jordan’s lead and make your own money outside of basketball.

50/50, play ball. Millionaires can’t cry slavery when they have maids and cooks working for them. Slavery is a job you can’t quit.

In my opinion the owners should reconsider what really important about this league is.
PLAYERS create the game, they do all the show, they ARE the league. Without them the league wouldn’t even exist.
Menawhile all the owners do is counting the money.
To create something you need people with certain skills and abilities that you can not learn. You have to get born with it. To rule it you also need some skills but you can learn how to do it.
And what’s more, the owners can change like in any business.

I believe that if the owners had offered 51, maybe 52%, we would have had a new season and maybe a certain agreement for many years.

There are other ways to make money out of the league than just cut pays.

I don’t know if that’s caused by crisis or whatever, but the owners seem to behave greedily.

I love basketball, but these OWNERS and PLAYERS are freaking driving me crazy! I hope the NBA calls for replacement players, because people just want something, anything to watch. These so called negotiations are silly. Everyone else in America doesn’t get a 50/50 deal with their employers, although we may feel we are pouring our blood sweat and tears into a job. We beg for health, dental and vision insurance. WHAT A JOKE! I wonder if they got the recession MEMO.

Thank You Lebron, Melo, Wade, Durant, CP3 and everyone else who is playing for charity during the lockout.

This is a business – owners are in it to make money. They should be the ones making a profit from the business they are running. Considering that the owners PAY the players as EMPLOYEES, the owners SHOULD have the right to do whatever they want. If players don’t like it, they can quit and new players will come along. All of this union stuff is ridiculous; employees should not be able to dictate the terms of the company.

If there were no players, these owners would not make thier billions. It is unfair to tell the players to be happy with thier millions, when the owners are not happy witht thier billions. For example, if Lebron James signs a $200 million contract for 10 years, how much do you think the owner makes off of him. Think about it, they make their 200 million back off James in 2 years. it seemes like they have slave contrcats just like the music industry and want the talent to make their money off of endorsements, which they get a cut of. I am not saying that these players are responsible with their money, which they arent, but look at the big picture. If someone is making 75% more off me compared to what they pay me, I should have the right to ask questions and re-negotiate my deal. Is it fair that I make $10 million and my boss makes $100 million off of my talent, heart, blood, sweat and tears…..Think about it

The problem with your logic is that the owners happened to buy these teams with the clothes on their back, all of these owners are accomplished entrepeneurs. they already have billions before they muy a team, it is more a labour of love than a business opportunity for most. So why should it have to become a headache. 50/50 is still quite unfair for the owners, it should be at least 45/55 in their favour..

While I enjoy basketball, looking at it fairly, Players should be thankful for the millions they make and take a pay cut and still make millions.
It is my understanding in the NBA there are great accolades also and you can have many other opportunities as a result, like endorsements, etc.
If its true the owners lost money then sides should compromise, if your not happy with the millions you can still make even after the negotiations, then maybe find a job elsewhere.

I know that 50/50 is a long way from 43/57, but how can anything but 50/50 be considered fair to both sides? How did it ever get to 43/57 in the first place? I think the players should come down to 50, but I don’t understand how the owners can expect them to take less than 50 either now or in the future.

I love the “for your family” line used by the agents. I heard it a couple of times during free agency last summer from some notable players. Now I know that they were just regurgitating what their agents fed them. I understand making a better life for your family, but my family does pretty well on a less than $2 million salary, so I don’t buy the family excuse.

I also want to say that I think that fans tend to side with the owners more often than the players because players come and go. The players may be the talent, but it’s the owners that stick around. Sure, the owners families are doing even better than the players families, but the owners can provide jobs for the community for a long time even if it is indirectly. The owners feed more than just their own families. I’m not trying to make them sound like saints. They do it for their own selfish reasons, but their selfishness benefits me more directly than the players selfishness. The people that will be most harmed financially by missed games are the guys making $8/hr.

It is a battle of Billionaires vs. Millionaires and us common creatures who shell out way too much money to watch a game we love and would play for free. Do you think we really care how much these people are making. We just want to watch the game we love. For me doesn’t matter if it is high school, college, or pro. I love the game. Get past the business and play the game. Honestly when it comes down to it, (Granted I don’t know much on the business aspect of the NBA) I think players should be grateful for what they make. They make millions to play this game. Give them more of a cut on using their name and call it a day. There are endorsment money and much more they can do after the game ends. Teach responsibility and the money can last a life time.